Mikhail Gorbachev Net Worth Income Profile and Salary last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Coming from a Russian peasant family in the North Caucasus region, he studied Law at the University of Moscow (1950-55). There he married Raisha Maximovna Titorenko and joined the Communist Party. Returning to his region of origin, he made a rapid political career, ascending to posts of regional responsibility in the communist youths and in the party. He completed his training with Agronomy studies in the sixties, which allowed him to obtain his first great political success in facing the catastrophic drought of 1968.

It was then that he jumped into national politics, being elected a member of the Supreme Soviet (1970), the Party Central Committee (1971, Secretary of Agriculture in 1978) and the Politburo (1980). This rapid ascent culminated in his election as secretary general of the Communist Party of the USSR after the death of Chernenko (1985), by a narrow margin of votes; Thus obtaining the maximum power of the declining Soviet power, which would be completed by his appointment as president of the Supreme Soviet and head of state (1988).

Gorbachev’s arrival in power meant not only a generational renewal but also a hope for political renewal: Gorbachev embodied the reformist trend that proposed a liberalizing opening to remove the USSR from the economic, political and cultural stagnation in which it had been plunged since The time of Brezhnev. Gorbachev did not disappoint those expectations, since since 1990 launched an extremely bold political program that would not only end the communist dictatorship in the USSR, but the very existence of that state, thus transforming the international scene deeply.

This program, however, was the work of a convinced communist, eager to strengthen and perfect the socialist regime through transparency (glasnost) and restructuring (perestroika). The glasnost came first and more easily: Gorbachev implemented a greater transparency of information, ended the repression of dissidents, dismantled the police state and censorship of the press, restored a certain freedom of expression and publicly acknowledged the crimes and errors committed in The past for the party and for the Soviet state. All this gained the support of governments and Western public opinion.

This welcome is not surprising, since Gorbachev practiced a pacifist foreign policy, in fact leading the USSR to renounce its role as a great world power, in order to reduce the heavy military expenses that could hardly support the weak economy of the country (Treaty of disarmament agreed with the United States of Reagan in 1987, withdrawal of Afghanistan in 1989). The withdrawal of the Soviet army led to more or less revolutionary processes that ended communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, opening the way for the reunification of Germany (1990).

Economic rebuilding, however, would be one of Gorbachev’s major failures: perestroika was to bring the Soviet economy out of chaos and the anchors into which it was engulfed, introducing more freedom of enterprise and letting the market act to correct the defects of Planning. However, these reforms did not produce immediate positive results, as they further disorganized the existing productive system and deepened the impoverishment of the majority of the population. All this created social tensions, aggravated by the political-economic interests that were affected.

On the political side, an opening was initiated that should gradually lead to a multi-party democracy; But progress in this path, considered excessive by the communist “old guard”, was considered too slow by growing opposition outside the party: Gorbachev and his team were advancing slowly by the resistance within the regime and by the fear of losing control of process. The main effect of the opening was the emergence of nationalist sentiments, which took shape in independence movements in the various republics that formed the USSR.

In 1991 there was an attempted military coup d’etat of involutionary tendency, which was arrested by the force of the radical democratic movement, headed by Boris Yeltsin; He became the owner of power in Russia, removing Gorbachev and agreeing with the leaders of the other republics to dismantle the USSR. Gorbachev retired from politics in that same year; Although presented to the presidential elections of Russia in 1996, obtained a lousy result, reflecting the unpopularity that was gained in its own country.

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